Isaacson:
(do Musk) So I said, great idea. We had had a long talk where I said two things:
I need to do this book not based on a bunch of interviews, but based on two full years of being by your side whenever I want to be, in every meeting and every meal and every walk in the factory, and just watching you so I can get stories and not just interview answers.
And number two is, you have to agree that you have absolutely no control over the book. He agreed to both.
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I can’t really calculate it, but for two years, at least a week a month, I’d be by his side for 14 hours a day. So it was hundreds of hours.
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This is a guy who, to a lot of people, really came to be seen as a villain over the course of your reporting. At the same time, he’s a charismatic person who you spent a lot of time with for two years. As his biographer, it must be impossible not to have some degree of fondness or sympathy.
My mission was to serve the reader, not to serve Musk, not to serve the enemies, not to serve the fans, but to try to be as honest as I could. The way I did it is, the book is driven by stories. I describe a scene and exactly who said what. The reader might make his or her own judgment and say, well, he was really an asshole to that person. Or they might say, wow, he drove that group to get the rocket stacked within a week. I hope people have complex reactions.